“Apple has acquired Texture, the online news service dubbed ‘the Netflix of magazines’ that lets users access to more than 200 magazines for $10 per month,” Sara Fischer writes for Axios. “It’s expected to continue operating as a standalone service.”

“While it’s unclear how Apple plans to integrate the service into its current product suite, including Apple News, the acquisition makes obvious Apple’s plans to invest in news distribution,” Fischer writes. “The move could help Apple expand both Apple News on iOS and its subscription business more broadly.”

“Apple’s purchase of Texture raises tantalizing possibilities for publishers eager to jumpstart their digital business. But it’s not the first time publishers have hoped Apple would save their business and so far redemption has yet to come from Cupertino or elsewhere,” Fischer writes. “Publishers currently lament that while they love Apple News… from a traffic distribution perspective, they aren’t seeing as much revenue being generated from the partnership as they would hope.”

What we really want to see is an “Apple Prime,” as described by Goldman Sachs analysts Simona Jankowski and Drew Borst is an October 2016 note to clients. This “Apple Prime” subscription would include the Apple Music service, access to the iTunes library of TV shows and movies (some for free), Apple’s forthcoming original content, and exclusive sports programming.

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Further, we’d really like to see a way to pay for all of the Apple services we choose for one price. Give us a bunch of tick boxes and let us choose our combination of iCloud storage, Apple Music, iTunes Match, etc. and let us pay a single price for all of our choices. — MacDailyNews, October 17, 2016

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6 Comments

I suspect that there may be even more to this acquisition. Perhaps Apple is thinking one level higher.

If Apple exerts pressure on this large stable of publishers in Texture to ensure that all that is published is demonstrably FACTUAL, in the sense that it’s NOT fake news but IS publication according to the best teachings of the schools of journalism, then Apple will have succeeded in creating a large body of sources of fact for a very large number of users, thereby helping to dampen the ‘fake news echo chamber’ from being as effective as it has been, hitherto. That’s an enormous public service from Apple.

If Apple succeeds in this, then, while it is true that the success would be good for their business, it will also be true that Apple would have created a broad ecosystem that is demonstrated over time to be factual publishing, something that is so clearly needed today.

Let’s not let this thread get into which subjects Apple might want to allow published, i.e. discussions of Apple’s potential for censorship. Let’s keep this thread to the idea that Apple might just be able to ensure that what IS published is factual. That distinction is important this idea; it’s an idea that could, after what has been a period of a great amount of non-factual publishing, create the inertia necessary for us to have public discourse based at least mainly upon fact.

You shallow politicos are always so amusing. In your view of the world, everything is single dimensional. People like you claim simultaneously to be in the center but everyone else is on the extreme left. Hmmm…..

The real world is complicated, with many facets to every issue. Apple is a complicated beast. It isn’t liberal, it is corporate. Which means that the people with the gold make the rules. Investors have okayed for Tim to give himself and his friends insane pay and latitude in social engagements, just like every other corporate CEO. Leftists like Cook don’t lie (at least nobody on Right Wing Daily News has identified a definitive lie), it just so happens that liberals like Cook care as much about emotions and feelings and justice as they do political power and personal profit. At least that’s what Cook would say, he’s rather preoccupied at the moment counting his stock options.

Another couple thoughts: Tim Cook is not Apple. He is just the cheerleader of the moment. I doubt he makes any decisions. It’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t have a firm grasp of details, doesn’t use most products that Apple makes, and doesn’t spend any time with Apple customers at the operational level. So even if Cook is a liberal, doesn’t make Apple “liberal”. Apple is a profiteer making money by corralling people into walled gardens, preferably to the beancounters nonstop subscriptions , just like any other corporation wants to do these days. That ain’t liberal. Liberal used to mean to give freely, live and let live, give peace a chance. Apple is very happy to use communist Chinese near-slave labor in a nation that doesn’t have any good environmental or labor laws in order to maximize its profits. Is that liberal?

The press, well, that’s the never ending scapegoat of the far right. Everyone can name just as many right wing media outlets as left wing, and the ones on both extremes suck because today it is all about clicks and advertising, not verification of facts. Every media outlet has its spin, they don’t even try to conceal it anymore. So the polarized whining is pointless because both sides suck. The truth can be found in peer reviewed publications and scientific journals where the funders of the study are identified (and/or nonprofit), sources are referenced, and multiple cross sources are named. You will never get that level of honesty in a tweet, and instagram, a fb post, or a wordpress blog. It doesn’t happen. So stop the scapegoating and stick to the discussion topic.

Apple, being a corporation and not an underdog computer company, is getting into the news distribution business because it is profitable, it garners more power for the corporation, and because the masses are easily addicted to headlines without substance. It’s easy profits. Every media company does it, at all ends of the multidimensional spectrum.

You realize that a large portion of the publications on Texture are digital versions of magazines found in print form in newsstands, bookstores and other retail outlets. In other words in Texture, Apple has simply bought one digital outlet (albeit a popular one) for those magazine publishers. I highly doubt Apple will have any better luck this time around (after Apple’s Newstand App days) in exerting any more ‘pressure’ than they did in the past to changing any publication’s editorial style. It would be more likely that the publishers will terminate their presence in Texture and Apple will just end up with an near-empty ‘bag’ should push-come-to-shove.